Transcript

0:00

Batya Friedman: So tell me about a typical day then, when you were doing investigations during that time and you would be out in the field somewhere, maybe some events that happened that particularly stay with you or witnesses you spoke with. Not their names or identities, but stories about what that felt like and, and what it was like to be an investigator?

Interpreter: The things that have stayed with me is that during our in-, field investigation, we’ll meet many people telling us a story but what struck me was the story of a girl who was raped. These stories of sexual violence moved us so deeply that we had to exert a lot of control, self-control, in order not to weep in front of her; it was really a terrible experience, in Butare.

2:17

BF: So, for the women that you interviewed, who were raped, when you were looking for witnesses – you probably had a chance to interview many women who had been raped. Over time, did you find better ways to ask questions or if you were to recommend, if this situation happens again and there’s another investigator somewhere else for another tribunal, needing to do the same kind of thing, do you have suggestions how to go about this part of the investigation, in a reasonable way, or things to avoid?

Interpreter: So you know when we first went on the field we had no training whatsoever on how to deal with raped women, traumatized people. So it is with experience, gathering experience in our work, we know now that we have to adapt to the mental status of the person we are investigating. We have different ways of putting questions to a normal person as compared to a traumatized person.

Interpreter: And that we don’t, we put the questions in order not to hurt their feelings or to trigger again the trauma for them to relive it again. So now we are at the stage where we appeal to the assistance of psychologists who go first on the field and prepare the victims so that they are ready to take our questions. We, also we have organized some training seminars with colleagues and I have prepared two booklets on how to go about putting questions to normal people and to traumatized people.

6:36

BF: Could you give us some examples of the kind of question, the way you might ask a question of someone who was normal versus someone who was traumatized or had been raped? Just so we have a sense of how the questions are different?

Interpreter: So, to a normal person, we, we can ask an open-ended question. We’ll tell, ask them, “Can you explain to us what you have seen or what you have experienced during the genocide?” But to a person who has been raped, we cannot, we just ask the question, “Have you been raped?” The person will answer yes. If she says yes, we’ll ask “By whom“? But we never ask her how it was done because this will rekindle her sufferings and this is what we’re trying to avoid.

The views expressed in the video interviews are those of the speaker and do not necessary reflect the views of the Value Sensitive Design Research Lab, Information School, University of Washington, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, United Nations, or the funders of this project.